1/06/2014

I recently came across an interesting 2005 post by Tae Kim, author of the famous Guide to Learning Japanese and a modern legend in serious Japanese-learner circles.

The article is entitled "Debunking the Japanese sentence order myth" and it makes a pretty convincing case against the general trend of calling Japanese an SOV (subject-object-verb) language. It's a recommended read for those interested.

As he says, word order in Japanese is very fluid, thanks in large part to the presence of its particles, which identify how a word is being used. Shoot, you can even pick and choose your particles sometimes (e.g., using は instead of を or が) and combine them (e.g., には or へは) to further add nuance.

The gist of the story here is that I've obtained employment in Nagoya (though I'm keeping it a bit quiet until my visa is in-hand, at least). I'll be teaching English conversation and doing some translating at a company there. After almost six years (!) since coming back to the U.S., I'm finally standing on the cusp of accomplishing my goal. I'm glad that I'll be starting back in Aichi too.

For the moment, though, I'm pretty wiped and am trying to get some rest.